Haptic realism
Erik Poppe’s film U-July 22 and the aesthetics of
duration
This case study argues that the kind of temporality that
arises from slow cinema generates a new form of film realism. Pivotal to this new
realism is what I refer to as an aesthetics of duration, the
specifically cinematic visualization of coherent and protracted time. An aesthetics
of duration also produces a presence effect, which, this essay suggests, can be
linked to the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and Martin Seel.
Charting the key strands of an intellectual history of realism in the field of film
theory, the article also appraises contemporary work on realism such as that of
Ivone Margulies and Lúcia Nagib. The second part of the essay focuses on single-take
films and uses as its case in point Erik Poppe’s U-July 22, a
feature film reenacting the massacre that took place on the Norwegian island Utøya
on 22 July 2011. The argument here is that the single-take approach enhances the
authenticity of the narrative, replicating the sense of panicked claustrophobia that
the victims must have felt during the shooting. The film’s handheld ambulatory
camera enables a seamless temporality that forcefully instills in the audience a
sense of fervent, haptic realism.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Film theory and the reconceptualization of realism
- 3.Utøya: Representation, form, and ethics
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Works cited